Matthews says Obama's six-point lead is “almost ... negligible” after suggesting a six-point lead for McCain among suburban white women is significant

Written by Ryan Chiachiere

Published

Discussing a Washington Post/ABC News poll, Chris Matthews characterized Sen. Barack Obama's six-point lead over Sen. John McCain as “almost ... negligible” a day after he falsely suggested -- for the second time -- that McCain's six-point lead over Obama among white suburban women in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was statistically significant.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews characterized Sen. Barack Obama's six-point lead in a Washington Post/ABC News poll as “almost ... negligible” a day after he falsely suggested -- for the second time -- that Sen. John McCain's six-point lead over Obama among white suburban women in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was statistically significant. Matthews asserted on the June 17 edition of Hardball: “Here's how close this race is: The new Washington Post/ABC poll shows these two candidates for the presidency now 48 to 42. That's an almost, to me, negligible lead.” He added: “Plus, you could throw in the Bradley effect and how people may be talking one way and voting another.” Matthews went on to ask Newsweek senior Washington correspondent Howard Fineman why Obama was “only six points ahead.” The Washington Post/ABC poll, conducted June 12-15, had a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.

As Media Matters for America has noted, during the June 16 Hardball, a chart that appeared on-screen depicting the results of the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted June 6-9, provided only the margin of error for the survey as a whole -- 3.1 percentage points -- and not the margin of error for the subset of white suburban women -- reportedly 9.34 percentage points. While the chart was displayed, Matthews stated: “I want to start with some poll numbers here. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has Senator Obama beating Senator McCain among women by 19 points, among white women by seven points. But McCain leads among suburban women by six.” Matthews did not note that the margin of error for the subset of white suburban women was reportedly three times the 3.1-percentage-point margin of error for the poll as a whole, and the results for white suburban women highlighted on the chart were well within the margin of error and not statistically significant. Matthews had previously made the same false suggestion about the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll during the June 12 edition of Hardball.

From the June 17 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: OK, let's take a look at the big developments here. Here's how close this race is: The new Washington Post/ABC poll shows these two candidates for the presidency now 48 to 42. That's an almost, to me, negligible lead. Plus, you could throw in the Bradley effect and how people may be talking one way and voting another. Look, it was seven, now it's six.

Now, take a look at the issues here. What's fascinating is that the people now think the economy is the huge issue. We know that 33 -- the Iraq war is still up there, close to 20. Health care, of course, is always there, and gas and energy. You throw that on top of the economic issue, you'd have 40 percent there roughly.

Now, let's take a look at how the candidates do on the issues -- “Who do you trust more to handle?” And then this is -- we've done this before. Obama is killing him on the economy, killing him on health care, killing him on gas prices. McCain's got this almost inconsequential advantage of one point on Iraq.

OK, if that's all true, why is he only six points ahead, Howard Fineman?